Black Ops 4 Sales Give Activision Its Biggest Digital Launch Ever

Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 is now the most successful digital launch title in the history of Activision's publishing catalogue, delivering big on the promise showcased in the trailers and previews leading up to the game's release. That means Black Ops 4 has already beaten the record previously held by last year's Call of Duty: WWII.

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Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 is now the most successful digital launch title in the history of Activision's publishing catalogue, delivering big on the promise showcased in the trailers and previews leading up to the game's release. That means Black Ops 4 has already beaten the record previously held by last year's Call of Duty: WWII.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 is the latest in a long line of shooters published by Activision and developed by Treyarch. The game initially looked extremely strong in early demos, but was then met with some backlash from critics once Treyarch announced the developed had completely scrapped the planned single-player campaign for the game, instead choosing to focus on its multiplayer modes. While many would argue that the bulk of Call of Duty's franchise staying power is certainly intrinsic to the quality of its multiplayer, there were still reservations regarding the choice to completely eschew a traditional single-player campaign.

As it turns out, those concerns were unwarranted, and multiplayer is the name of the game when it comes to Call of Duty: Black Ops 4. A statement released by Activision yesterday confirmed the game's claim to the publisher's record launch day digital sales, and although no numbers were available, it's hard to imagine it hasn't been a wildly successful couple of days for the veteran duo of Activision and Treyarch. The total number of people who connected online to play Black Ops 4 also increased from last year's series release, indicating player excitement was also at an all-time high.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 was also the first digital launch that saw Blizzard's Battle.net handle the PC platform side of things, and launch day PC digital sales more than doubled from last year's mark, which suggests that the new PC infrastructure has borne fruit already. Black Ops 4 also became the day one digital sales record holder for the PlayStation Store, while becoming the best-selling Activision Xbox One digital game on day one globally as well.

Of course, it doesn't hurt that critics have been enamored with Call of Duty: Black Ops 4. In Screen Rant's Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 review, we said that "the Zombies offering is bigger than ever, multiplayer feels fresh and fun when it works as intended, and Blackout is just what the franchise (and battle royale genre) needed," awarding the game with a 4-out-of-5 score. Buoyed by similar reviews all around the web, it appears that Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 could be on the fast track for a few more Activision records, and also proves that successful games don't necessarily need to have a single-player campaign to sell well, either.